Defendant in the Georgia election interference case: Trump won 2020 election

One of the defendants in the Fulton elections interference case is pursuing a unique legal strategy: trying to prove that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election in Georgia.

While other Trump allies, notably those who have reached plea deals with prosecutors, have backed away from election fraud claims, Harrison Floyd is doubling down. The onetime head of Black Voices for Trump was charged in August with three felony counts stemming from his alleged role in the harassment of poll worker Ruby Freeman.

In a court hearing Friday, attorneys for Floyd said they plan to present evidence that rebuts the information at the heart of the 97-page indictment: that Trump lost the 2020 election, including in Georgia and Fulton County, and that the case’s defendants refused to accept that fact, “knowingly and willfully” engaging in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the results of the election.

To do that, Floyd’s team has fired off a flurry subpoenas to a handful of state and local government agencies. Among the mountains of information it has requested: all mail-in absentee ballots cast in Fulton in the November 2020 election, along with the envelopes they came in and every absentee ballot application; reports from Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures Georgia’s voting machines; and forensic images of the servers used to count, tabulate and report election results.

Floyd’s team also has demanded an unredacted copy of the Secretary of State’s investigative report of alleged election fraud at State Farm Arena on election night 2020, where Freeman and her daughter were working, along with unredacted copies of any and all documents related to the report. That includes interviews FBI investigators conducted with a person who created a fake Instagram account that purported to be Freeman and posted about engaging in election fraud.

Floyd’s team believes the subpoenas will produce exculpatory evidence. If Fulton can’t reconcile suspicious-looking ballots, said his attorneys in a recent court filing, “then the state’s indictment about many things including false statements evaporates — instantly.”

Even if they can’t prove Trump won, Floyd’s attorneys said there is enough evidence to show that, on Jan. 4, 2021, when Floyd spoke with Freeman, his beliefs that there might have been substantial election fraud were not unreasonable and, hence, there was no criminal intent.

The secretary of state’s office, Fulton County clerk and board of registration and elections have asked Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, to quash the subpoenas. Attorneys for the agencies have called Floyd’s requests “vague,” “unreasonable” and a “fishing expedition.”

During Friday’s hearing — the third anniversary of the 2020 general election — Jackson Sharman, an attorney for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said Floyd’s requests would be overly burdensome for the agency to comply with and that “little or anything that is in these documents is relevant to intent.”

Similarly, Chad Alexis, a senior assistant Fulton County attorney, said Floyd’s requests could take upwards of six months for local government employees to fulfill given the sheer amount of documents requested and the amount of personal information that would need to be redacted.

Alexis said Floyd’s team is “trying to produce this evidence later on to retroactively prove something that happened three years ago.”

Floyd attorney Christopher Kachouroff said he expects the Fulton district attorney’s office will introduce the certification of the 2020 election onto the record at trial, which shows Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia’s electoral votes.

“I do not believe that we’re required to take what the state says is true and not be able to rebut it or contest it,” Kachouroff said.

Floyd’s attorneys said they would be willing to pay for the agencies to produce documents, or to enter into a protective order, which would give them access to the documents with court penalties if they later reveal any sort of personal information.

McAfee at times sounded skeptical of Sharman’s argument in particular, suggesting the office likely received similar open records requests in the past. He indicated he still was grappling with how to balance the rights of defendants such as Floyd and that of government agencies that are required to safeguard personal information of Georgia citizens.

He asked the secretary of state’s office to provide more information about how long it would take to compile the information Floyd is requesting and how much it would cost given the number of employees to review the documents for redactions.

Floyd is a former Marine who briefly ran for a Georgia congressional seat in 2019.

According to the indictment, he is accused of recruited co-defendant Trevian Kutti, a onetime publicist for Kanye West and R. Kelly, to visit Freeman. After Freeman and Kutti began talking at a police station, the latter placed Floyd on speakerphone, and the two spoke to the poll worker at length, pressuring her to reveal information about alleged election fraud and warning her she was in danger if she did not comply.

Floyd is also the sole defendant in the Fulton case to spend time behind bars in the Fulton County jail. He surrendered in August without first hiring an attorney who could work out a prearranged bond on his behalf.

During his five days behind bars, Floyd became a cause celeb in some conservative circles. A crowdfunding campaign on the Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo has raised nearly $330,000 for his legal defense.